Gravitate
by taee
Summary: Just like how Gin-san and Kagura seem destined to reach out and fly, Shinpachi seems resigned to a fate of being nothing at all. (Basically, Shinpachi's daily life.)
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I don't own Gintama.

* * *

GRAVITATE

* * *

At some point in time, Shinpachi had resigned himself to being the outsider, the trailing third wheel of the Yorozuya.

Gin-san and Kagura both had their respective roles to play, as eccentric hero and cute heroine.

But Shinpachi? He was nothing much.

"A pair of glasses", people would joke. Something vague, maybe, like "he's a nice boy".

He _was_ a nice boy.

He was kind and polite, mindful of others, sensitive. Very nice. And that was about it.

He didn't have Gin-san's years of war-tempered experience, honed skills, or tenacity. He didn't have Kagura's exotic appearance, wild personality, or her raw power.

He didn't have any of that, and he would never, because then he wouldn't be Shinpachi. He knew that, but it rarely stopped him from being jealous.

The jealousy was absolutely stupid and dumb and childish, and he knew that just as well.

It wasn't like their strengths had come free; Gin-san and Kagura had both suffered greatly, more than Shinpachi could ever understand. Most of the time, it was hard to see. Gin-san had his laziness and go-with-the-flow attitude as a mask, and Kagura always lived in the present, but it was the moments where their pasts came back to haunt them that Shinpachi felt the most isolated.

Sometimes Gin-san would drift off in the middle of a conversation to stare dully with half-lidded eyes at a fallen apple, or at the fraying strands of a passing straw sandal and Shinpachi would snap his fingers a few times before the silver perm's face to bring him back. (After the first time, when he had placed a hand on Gin-san's shoulder and gotten a sword to the throat with an accompanying bruise, he didn't dare to make contact again.)

"...Shinpachi?" Gin-san would say. "Oh. It's just a pair of glasses." Then he'd sling an arm over the boy's shoulders and pull him closer to suggest some alcohol or a trip to the casino. Shinpachi would be angry and indignant, pull out his straight man act and remind Gin-san that Shinpachi was underage and the Yorozuya had no more money to waste on its leader's frivolous activities.

And that was the thing; it was all an act. Gin-san and Shinpachi, they both would ignore Gin-san's trembling and Shinpachi would always wish he could take it away. He never could, but Kagura knew how.

Like double negatives, her own shaking canceled out Gin-san's, and the times when Kagura would shoot up from a nap with screams fighting their way from her throat, Gin-san knew what to murmur soothingly into her bird's nest of brilliant hair to ease the shadows flitting across her face. Shinpachi placed the warm tea she liked on the coffee table and wondered how he fit into that world, that Yorozuya, that seemed to only have two.

There were three Yorozuyas sometime. One with the three of them all, another with Gin-san and Kagura and the glasses, and one with just Shinpachi toiling to give the Yorozuya a place to call its own.

To most, it seemed that the Yorozuya only had an office because of a miracle, likely several. Those who knew them personally, and maybe even Gin-san and Kagura too, assumed that their center of operations was mainly dependent on Gin-san's unique brand of charisma that swept Otose-san to his tune and allowed them to live there, essentially, rent free.

Otose-san's heart was certainly big enough, but Snack Otose's coin purse wasn't so generous as to be able to support long term loafing. Housing in Kabukicho wasn't cheap, after all.

The Yorozuya's presence on the second floor of Snack Otose was dependent on the one thing that seemed to move everyone, the thing that breathed life into the sleepless city: money. What else?

Some of it Kagura and Shinpachi snatched from the mouth of the various pachinko machines that Gin-san liked to visit in flashy bars and parlors with hazy air and handsy patrons. The bulk was brought in by Shinpachi's efforts.

There were so many in Kabuki-cho that knew of the Yorozuya, yet more that didn't, and Kabuki-cho was only a little place encapsulated within another, so not many physically stopped by the Yorozuya office. Shinpachi found customers himself.

In the mornings, before Shinpachi arrived at the office at twelve, when there was a general flurry of activity to set up tents and stalls and stores, that was when he did the real work.

The little jobs maybe didn't bag as much money as the "odd" jobs did, but was certainly stabler, and it got him freebies sometimes. If it wasn't enough, which happened more often than he would've liked, then it was a matter of looking around during twilight, when Kabukicho shed its lamb's skin and bared its fangs of neon lights, greed, and desperately sly prostitutes. If nothing could be found in the sleepless city, then he explored the rest of Edo.

Once, wandering through Yoshiwara after doing Tsukuyo-san a favor, he picked up a job at a brothel for a time. When his predecessor was kicked to the street in front of his eyes for assaulting one of the women, the brothel keeper had hired Shinpachi on the spot after examining him and determining that he was a "gutless virgin" and hadn't the balls to even look at a woman's naked shoulders.

"You'll never get laid," the woman added unnecessarily, gems flashing on her knuckles under the glimmer of her cigarette. "Come on in. Maybe you'll learn something." She turned and beckoned him forward, and Shinpachi followed, because the pay was good, because he wanted to prove that he wasn't, in fact, a gutless virgin, and because maybe he thought he might find some of the samurai soul that he chased after behind the wooden bars of the prostitutes' cage.

Five seconds after the keeper left him with instructions to kick out any unruly patrons, or loiterers, and to keep time on paying customers, a pale, delicate hand grasped onto his sleeve, and Shinpachi showed that he really was a gutless virgin. She was a high ranking courtesan, one of the tayu, and her kimono slid down to the crease of her elbow, revealing a smooth expanse of skin and the dip of her che-

Shinpachi averted his eyes before he could go further, a blush warming his ears and cheeks.

"Another virgin. How dull," she scoffed, fixing her clothes and refolding her legs to assume the regular prim and proper position.

"W-what's wrong with being a virgin?!" he spluttered.

"I'm Kasuga," she said, ignoring his protests, "and you're Shinpachi. Nice to meet you."

Then a customer called for her and he didn't see her again until the next night.

/

"Hey, Pachi-boy, want to know something?" Kasuga asked, her eyes slanting up towards him mischievously.

"O-ok," he said, unused to attention from the opposite gender.

"I'm turning twenty eight this year," she said, straightening her spine and tilting the corners of her lips at a passing man, his tabi-covered feet making soft pats against the hand-polished wood. "I've got a kid out there, somewhere," she added, almost like an afterthought. "A girl."

Like Seita and Hinowa, he thought, though far more of a tragedy. There was no Gin-san in Kasuga's story that would reunite her and her child. "What's her name?"

"Ayame. Pretty name, isn't it?"

Shinpachi nodded wordlessly.

"I hope she looks like you." At his quizzical look, Kasuga smiled sweetly, looking far younger than her twenty eight years. "Like a nobody, I mean."

"Hey!"

Kasuga almost laughed. "Nobodies have it easy. Trouble doesn't come looking for them. You must be somewhat brave, a nobody working in this kind of place. It means you went after trouble."

Shinpachi thought of explosive Kagura and gambling Gin-san then. "I guess so," he said.

It was nearing the end of his shift, so when a drunk man began shrieking his lungs out about some bad luck at the pachinko parlor, and it turned out to be Gin-san, the keeper let Shinpachi off early to get rid of the "ugly, silver perm-head".

"Gin-san," Shinpachi said, chewing on a meat skewer bought from a nearby stall because he forgot to eat dinner. Or lunch, for that matter. "You two really are trouble, you know? But now I can't imagine a life without you or Kagura."

"Whassaaat, Pa-chi?" Gin-san slurred drowsily. "Feeling….sentamenal?"

Then he leaned over and puked. Shinpachi, all too used to his drunk antics, stepped neatly out of the way of the torrent with a face of weary disgust. A whole lot of trouble, for sure.

Shinpachi dragged the samurai back to the Yorozuya and dumped him unceremoniously in the entryway, throwing a stray jacket over him.

The next day, at noon, when he opened the sliding doors, Gin-san was still sprawled in front of it, blearily blinking himself awake.

"Hey Shinpachi…."

"Good morning, Gin-san. Get up and get to work already! We're still behind on last month's rent!"

Gin-san didn't move, only stared resolutely at a brownish swirl in the wall. "...Me too, by the way. I couldn't imagine it either." Then he propped himself up, swayed for half a second, and ran for the toilet.

* * *

End.1

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A/N: My first fanfic for Gintama! Shinpachi is so underrated in my opinion, and his role isn't explored so much in the manga, so here this is. I kind of took liberties on what happens behind the scenes, obviously. Feedback is greatly appreciated!

Thanks for reading!


	2. Chapter 2

Note: I switch tenses suddenly towards the end? bc i usually write in present tense, and i was just trying some stuff out last chapter and this chapter.

Disclaimer: I don't own Gintama.

* * *

"Okita-san," Shinpachi said, mildly surprised to see the Shinsengumi officer down in Kabuki-cho so early in the morning. "What are you doing here?"

Okita-san pulled his red sleep mask with the strange eyes off his head sluggishly, rolling his head to the side jerkily. "Glasses."

"Shinpachi. My name is Shinpachi," he corrected. Reminding people was only a habit now. An overused aspect of his straight man act. The plastic handles of the grocery bags dug into his palms uncomfortably, and the beat of silence between them was equally uncomfortable, if not more. Shinpachi rarely interacted with Okita-san on his own; Kagura was usually there as a buffer, or in their case, a catalyst for widespread destruction. "...I'll just be going now."

Shinpachi was eight steps away when Okita-san tumbled off the bench with uncharacteristic clumsiness and jogged to catch up, removing the bags from his hands and carrying them with ease. As expected of the Shinsengumi's young prodigy.

"Thanks?" Shinpachi said, highly suspicious. Okita-san rarely did anything for anyone for free unless they were his sister or Kondo-san, and last time Shinpachi had checked, he was still the same old, boring glasses boy he'd always been. Definitely not a pretty lady or a gorilla.

"Which way are you headed?" The blonde asked, examining the contents of the bags critically. "...Is that sukonbu?" He squinted.

"It's not for Kagura, if that's what you were wondering."

"I wasn't," Okita-san rebuked instantly, head snapping up sharply to look at Shinpachi with almost angry eyes. "But who else is it for? That China beast is the only one who eats this kind of shit."

Shinpachi sighed. "You'd be surprised. If no one ate it why would stores sell it? Ah, it's this way." He glanced down at the crude yet functional sketch in his hand and pointed to a side road hidden behind the dango store's sign. Otose-san used to work there, and Gin-san liked it.

"It tastes like a dead man's food," Gin-san had mumbled when Shinpachi asked why, stuffing two of the dumpling skewers in his mouth whole. "Like a good memory."

Otose-san, who was eating with them, had sighed and shaken her head. "He's turning into a sap. Soon he'll be crying over Kagura changing her hairstyle," she said, and Shinpachi had privately agreed as a little voice in his head whispered, but what about me? He'd crushed down the voice like the dango between his teeth and let the warm taste of mitarashi soften his mouth, all salty sweet and subtly bitter sweet.

An obnoxious crackling sound dragged him back to the present. He turned to see Okita-san peeling back the clear plastic of an anpan with a clearly faked innocent look on his face. "What're you looking at?"

"HEY! That's a delivery! You'd better pay for that. And don't touch the other stuff."

Okita-san lifted an eyebrow. "And if I do?"

Shinpachi had the terrible, dreadful feeling that the officer was going to ask him (threaten him) something that would be entirely troublesome and not worth it, and he was completely right.

"Relax, glasses. I'll spare the goods. But help me out first." Okita-san smirked his super-sadist smirk. A shadow passed over his face briefly and the lopsided buildings around them suddenly seemed somehow ominous. Shinpachi shivered, already composing his obituary.

The sadist motioned towards the three grocery bags dangling from his right arm. "I'll hold onto these for now. Lead the way, glasses."

He lead the way.

/

About one hundred or so cobblestones past old man Gengai's repair shop, Okita-san spoke up again. "Why aren't danna and China with you? Isn't this a job?"

"If they came with me we'd never get anything done," Shinpachi said bluntly. "It's faster and safer and more productive if it's just me sometimes." He knew from various traumatic experiences. Various. "So what did you need help with?" Okita-san hadn't elaborated after coercing Shinpachi into assisting him.

"...China is avoiding me for some reason."

"She's underage!" Shinpachi shrieked. Love was in the air, and even if the red-eyed sadist had money and a personality that could handle Kagura, she was still young, and pure, and innocent and not allowed to date until she turned fifty. Also, given how physical the two rivals were with each other, it probably wouldn't be long before they-

Shinpachi felt his face flame over and his heart seize.

The cold line of a sword touched the side of his neck. "Whatever you're thinking," Okita-san said with the most sinister blank face Shinpachi had ever seen, "stop. I feel like you're thinking of something disgusting and it's hurting my ego."

"Y-yes, sir."

Okita-san sheathed his weapon, much to Shinpachi's relief.

"How much longer until we get there? My arm is getting tired."

Shinpachi stared down at his "map" blankly. This was his first time going to this "Hokuto Shinken", and to be fair, the owner's directions had been incredibly vague.

Okita-san interpreted his pause correctly. "Don't tell me we're lost."

Shinpachi laughed nervously.

"Give me that," Okita-san said, pointing at the map. "Oh. Hokuto Shinken. We already passed it."

Cue another, even more nervous laugh, and cold sweat from Shinpachi under Okita-san's heavy glare.

/

"You ate one of the anpan," Ikumatsu, the owner of ramen shop Hokuto Shinken, said.

"Okita-san ate it," Shinpachi said.

The officer raised his hand. "I ate it. We'll have some ramen to compensate."

Ikumatsu shrugged. "That's fair."

"I don't have money-"

"Don't worry, I'll pay." Okita-san said, reaching for his wallet. "Did you hear that? I'M going to TREAT GLASSES-BRO to some RAMEN."

"Wait a second-"

He placed a hand on Shinpachi's shoulder. "Help me out. Just sit and look happy."

None of the Yorozuya would turn down free food, so Shinpachi sat and looked and felt happy as Ikumatsu placed two steaming bowls of ramen and a complimentary manju on their table.

Three seconds later and already halfway through the bowl, Shinpachi looked up to see Okita-san's mildly disgusted and judging face and an angry Kagura's foot flying towards his face.

"SHINPACHIIIII! GET AWAY FROM MY MAAAN," she yelled, causing a hopeful look to flit over Okita-san, "JUUUUUUU!"

"Shut up, China!" He chucked his chair at the girl. "Who cares about manju?!"

Shinpachi dragged himself over to the counter, feeling very much like a cannon had nailed him, as the two began another of their duels. "S-sorry, Ikumatsu-san."

"It's fine." She gave him a look of pity, handed him another manju, and went to kick the fighters out of the store.

/

"What happened to you, Pachi-boy?" Gin-san asked as Shinpachi slid open the thin door to the Yorozuya. "Your glasses have a chip on them."

"Gin-san…" he started, trailing off and sinking into the couch with an air of hopelessness. "Kagura's going to become an adult soon."

The weekly Jump issue slipped from the silver permed samurai's hands with a thunk. "H-ha ha. Ha. Y-you must be kidding, right, Shinpachi? C-come on, you're the straight man here. It's not true, right?"

Shinpachi said nothing, an even darker gloom settling over his prone body.

"W-who is it. _WHO IS IT._ WHO DARES TO DEFLOWER-"

"I'LL DEFLOWER YOUR HEAD AND TURN YOU BALDER THAN MY STUPID DAD," Kagura threatened, jumping into the building from the window and holding Gin-san's perm in a death grip. "And stop gossiping like a housewife, glasses."

"I'm not a housewife!"

Kagura promptly ignored him and plopped onto the other couch with Gin-san's Jump and a secretive smile no one would ever give to a shitty manga like Gintaman.

Shinpachi exchanged a look with Gin-san.

"K-kagura, did something good happen?" Gin-san said, left eyebrow twitching nervously.

"...Did you make up with Okita-san, maybe?" Shinpachi asked.

"Shinpachi," Kagura said, her face glowing. "I want tea."

/

The sun, burnt orange and travel weary, drips down the sky and behind Yoshiwara's staggered skyline, casting soft blue shadows around the corners and the people that slowly sprinkle into the streets, lured in by the prospects of the night.

After the battle with Housen, and after the covers over the city of night were taken off, the sunlight that streamed in was lovely and painted everything in a soft gold.

But nothing has really changed at all.

The women are still sold, the men still come to enjoy themselves. It's all as heartbreaking as before, in that Shinpachi can do nothing to change it.

"Don't you ever want to leave?" he asks Kasuga-san.

Her fingers, tracing the golden outline of an embroidered red camellia on her kimono, still and press down into the flesh of her leg. "This question? Be a little more creative, Shinpachi."

"Oh, I'm sorry. That was kind of insensitive."

"It's fine. It's just that everyone seems to ask that at some point," she says, now ironing the flower with the heel of her palm, like trying to scrub it away. "...It's not so bad. Even if the doors were wide open I wouldn't go. Most of us wouldn't."

Shinpachi doesn't know what kind of expression he wears, but it makes Kasuga-san feel inclined to speak again.

"Don't look like that. It's really not so bad," she insists.

Later, after his shift ends at one, he wanders through the streets of Yoshiwara in the general direction of Kabuki-cho, and realizes that Kasuga-san never really answered his question.

The lopsided outlines of Yoshiwara's buildings are inky black and almost ominous, but the crowds are boisterous and wild, the lights spill outwards in all shades of dazzling, and Shinpachi decides it was really such a stupid question.

* * *

End.2

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A/N: Aaand Sougo appears! I doubt I'll pair Shinpachi with anyone, but pairings that will be in this story are okikagu, kamusoyo, and probably gintsu. But in later chapters.

Thanks for reading!


	3. Chapter 3

Disclaimer: I don't own Gintama

/

The feeling that everything was going to shit started when Kagura wouldn't let Shinpachi follow her to space.

The feeling that everything had already gone to shit, and was going to permanently stay that way, started when Gin-san figuratively tore down the burnt and battered Yorozuya signboard.

At that point, there were more than a few thoughts and panicked cries flailing around in his poor overworked brain, but the most prominent one, in big bold print, was, _what the hell am I going to do?_

He could so clearly see in his mind, two paths, one for Kagura, one for Gin-san, them walking away, then him, standing stock-still, hands outstretched for people forever far, far beyond his reach.

 _Why am I always the one left behind?_

 _Why don't I ever have a grand purpose to take me away?_

Gin-san smiled when Shinpachi numbly said that he wanted to restore Edo, restore his father's dojo, finally, but the only thing he really felt up to doing at the moment was screaming.

Not for the first time, he wished he could be like Gin-san and unite people whether they wanted it or not; he wished he could be needed enough to make a difference.

But he was only Shinpachi. Only a pair of glasses. He couldn't grab onto anything no matter how desperately he tried.

So he remained silent. Kagura did too, but since she was leaving, it wouldn't have made a difference anyhow if she'd protested in her characteristic fierce manner.

Gin-san folded his arms behind his head, eyes half lidded, maybe even melancholy in the dusk. With an air of finality, he let out a long sigh.

And the matter of their death was settled just like that.

\

The morning after Gin-san vanished by himself in the night, Shinpachi saw Kagura off to the Terminal. They hugged once, an awkward strange thing, then Kagura smacked him on the shoulder and boarded her father's ship without looking back even once. Shinpachi stood there, neck aching, watching her fly into the infinite everything, long after Kagura's ship had become indistinguishable, until the sun slid down the sky, until security tossed him out.

Walking back to the rubble that was now the Yorozuya, he thought, again, _what the hell am I going to do?_

 _What the hell can I do?_

The answer rose unbidden to his lips.

"Nothing. Absolutely nothing."

\

There had been a time once when Shinpachi took a meaningless punch to the face and fell amongst the garbage, gazing at the crows circling above as he dreamt sincerely of death.

The Shinpachi of the past had heard a sound, then. The worst song ever, was what it was. He'd turned his head to the left and there in front of the alley, standing in the light, was a purple haired girl with a beat up guitar and a barren tin can.

It was so bad. Screeching and cacophonies and discordants and mistaken keys. It was so honest to god terrible he could laugh, jeer, and it would be fitting. But he did not.

Instead he crawled. He couldn't find the motivation to stand or to walk, so he crawled, scrabbling in the dirt without any fight left to care. And it was the hardest thing he'd ever done in his short, empty life, that fifteen foot crawl of his. He'd just wanted to give up. Collapse on the ground and lay there until he rotted. Everything just felt so pointless. Why did he struggle? Life inherently had no meaning, and he didn't have a purpose in existing. It was just a cycle of nothing in return for nothing. Why persevere on such an endeavor?

But the girl was still singing. There were a few people leaning against the wall chucking slurs and profanities at her, her and her stupid song and her bright, threadbare kimono. They were all yelling, wolf whistling, telling her to shut up shut up shut up shut up. But still, she sang. So Shinpachi went onward too and finally arrived at her feet, trying to want to live enough to at least listen to the end of her song.

What would be at the end? he'd wondered, and he'd never found out, because she never stopped.

Then he'd sobbed these big ugly tears, just as bad as her music, and he hadn't a clue of why. Just clapped dumbly, over and over, saltwater turning his crusty pants to mud.

She was shining, he'd realized. Shining, despite the utter bullshit she sang, despite the shithole that shit on them both.

He must've gone home at some time after so many hours, but he didn't remember it, or the conclusion of the girl's solo stage. All Shinpachi did remember was that that girl had risen like the sun and taken him in her wake.

In hindsight, Terakado Tsuu was the very first samurai he'd chosen to follow.

\

If Shinpachi had to put into words what he hated most about his current situation, it'd be that he realized that he hadn't gotten anywhere at all. The net progress he'd made over the years remained at a flat, solid zero, and he too, remained festering in the filth.

Maybe he'd even regressed. Maybe all along he believed that he was moving forward, that Otsuu-chan, Gin-san, had inspired some sort of change in him, but in truth he'd been deceiving himself all along. He didn't know he had the potential to be such a liar.

Or say that he had been honest in his observations. Say that he had been lead into the light and shown the better path.

Either way, pessimistic or optimistic, Shinpachi had received another punch of the same nature and returned to the trash where he originated. He didn't think there'd be any chances of him being able to gather enough strength to leave again on his own.

Shinpachi curled up on his futon in the dojo, breathing carefully measured breaths and pressing his hands over his ears as he mumbled 'chome chome' on repeat, a prayer, probably a curse, really.

 _Chome chome._

 _Chome chome._

Later, as tears washed down his face, Tae spread a blanket over his prone body.

 _Chome chome._

 _Chome chome._

 _Chome chome._

 _Chome chome._

\

However, though he was inclined to fully embrace pessimism as his new religion, it seemed that Gin-san and Kagura could never truly leave his side, because in the end, he still crawled out from within the futon.

/

A/N: Hi it's me...! I'm back after a long time of not being super into Gintama.  
I feel like in the months that have passed, I've learnt that I should never promise anything, especially updates. So I won't. But I will say that I've fallen in love with this story again, and that I have a few ideas in store.  
As you can probably tell, my writing style has changed quite a bit, and quite a lot of time has been skipped since the last chapter. Mainly it's because I really wanted to write this? and didn't want to spend so much time in intermission. The story will continue from here, and now, there is a plot! haha.  
Additionally, planned pairings have changed. Okikagu is no more. Well. It's still okikagu...? Except not. Well. It's like okikagu 2.0...? You'll see. And I now know who Shinpachi will be paired with. It's my new otp, actually.

Reviews are appreciated and thanks for reading!


End file.
